The new Apple TV had two remotes. The first is the minimalist metal slab that will ship with your tiny box. The second is the iOS application that you’ll download from the App store.

The first iteration of Apple TV had the same little white infrared remote the company used to ship with laptops. It was great for clicking through a slideshow presentation. It wasn’t very good to keep around your living room, unless you stuck it in a bowl with your keys. It wasn’t a real remote, and most people hated keeping track of another remote anyway, especially one that got lost at the drop of a hat.

The new remote, released earlier this year, isn’t a lot different from that old white remote. It’s a nicer device; like everything else Apple makes now besides the new square iPods, it’s a long strip of aluminum. It’s still got just six buttons: up, down, right, left, play/pause and menu.

But that minimalism seems almost smarter now. Apple now seems to be figuring out the exact number of hardware buttons it needs on each device. It took away too much on the iPod Shuffle, so now some buttons are coming back. It wanted to get rid of the buttons on the Nano, so it changed it to touchscreen.

For the Apple TV, it’s keeping the action on the screen, with the software interface. Make that easy to navigate, give people the exact options they need depending on context, and you don’t need dozens of buttons on the remote/media player/phone.

Maybe you don’t even need a remote, though. That’s because Apple TV’s second remote control is the Apple-made mobile device that Apple TV customers probably already own.

Seriously — what are the chances of someone buying Apple TV who doesn’t have an iPod, iPad or iPhone?

Instead of digging through the couch for your DVD remote, you can pull out your phone from your pocket and press play. Instead of scrolling endlessly through a Netflix queue, you can search for a movie title using your iPad.

Apple TV has Netflix search built in. That’s a big, keyboard-dependent upgrade for those of us who stream Netflix through our game consoles. TiVo’s got a hardware QWERTY keyboard now. Apple’s right there with a software counterpart, with the iOS onscreen keyboard.

So you can essentially perform much of your TV- and video-selecting activity on the touchscreen of your remote. You don’t even have to be in the same room as your television set: Just get the movie ready, walk up or down the stairs, then throw it on the screen of your choice. In theory, you could even carry the tiny Apple TV + HDMI + power cable around the house with you, too.

Still, these features merely hint at what’s possible when your remote is essentially a portable touchscreen computer. What if you could shake your iPod to shuffle songs playing on your Apple TV?

What if you could get a commentary track to play out of your iPhone’s speaker while the main soundtrack played through your TV’s sound system — as if the director were sitting next to you on the couch? What if your iPad could take screenshots of a movie playing on your TV, which you could mark up and share with your friends on Twitter or Ping?

In his essay “Gin, Television and Social Surplus” — originally titled “Looking for the Mouse” — NYU professor Clay Shirky tells an anecdote I really like. His friend’s 4-year-old daughter was watching a DVD when she hopped up and began poking around behind the screen. “I’m looking for the mouse,” she said.

Shirky’s lesson: Even 4-year-olds know a screen that only displays content to you while you sit passively waiting for it is a rip-off. “A screen that ships without a mouse,” he said, “ships broken.”

In 2008, that was profound. Now it almost seems silly. A TV screen, with a mouse? Attached with a cord? Your screen shouldn’t have a mouse. Your mouse — or remote — should have its own screen. A remote that ships without a screen ships broken. Four-year-olds were so dumb back then.